Vehicle Position Sensing Team

Sunday, May 21, 2017

In this week, the position sensing system cannot be used in the Maker Faire event, so we are focusing on how to help other teams. In addition, we need to make sure the corrugated metal strip will not get off which may affect the bogie moving.
Moreover, we had a final presentation in this week, so we spent most of the time to prepare it.

Sunday, May 14, 2017

In this week, our team did the last test with app team. Unfortunately, the result was disappointed. The position sensing system is completed, we have the position sensor and the corrugated ferrous strips ready.

We first tested the sensor on the bogie with the completed program. The accuracy was 20% and it was low, but very precised.

We retested the system with some sensor commented out, especially the ultrasonic sensor, the accuracy increased to eighty percent. The Mobile App team and us confirmed that the run time of the program was too long for the position sensor to detect and count all the peaks as expected.The mobile app team and the control team decided to reconnect some of the sensors to the interrupt pins, such as the hall effect sensors and the ultrasonic sensors,and wish to increased the loop time of the program. However, the accuracy of the position senors was even lower, there is still something blocking the position sensing code.The program could be solve by moving the position sensors to the interrupt pins too. However, because maker faire is approaching, the teams are trying to be conservative, and we have no idea what the will bring to the overall program if two of the sensers are on the interrupt pins.Therefore, there would not be enough time for us to finished the programming and testing in this semester.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

In this week, our team focused on fixing the corrugated metal strips, especially for the curve position. After we did the test for the sensor, we found that when the bogie passed the curve, some of the peaks of the strips would miss data. It means the sensor was not close enough to the strips. Therefore, we took off all the corner strips, and add a double tape between strips and track. It could reduce the distance between the sensor and the strips.
In addition, the sensor bracket was not as good as what we expected, so we designed another one. Also, we will test on Thursday or Friday.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

This week, the team was focusing on testing the position sensing system with the mobile app team. We tested our sensing. However, the sensor bracket was too far away from the corrugated metal strip at some place around the track, the team decided to design sensor brackets with different gaps between the sensor and the corrugated metal strips. The team will test the sensor brackets in this rest of this week.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

The team mainly focused on the presentation. On the other hand, we were informed by the Mobile app team before the Paseo that our sensor did not work properly with digital pins. Thus, we have to switch to analog pins and convert the analog signal into digital signal in our program. And the program has to be retested in next week.

This week was the PaseoPublic
Prototyping Challenge. Even though the position sensing system was
not ready in the Paseo event, the position sensing team still participated in
the whole Paseo event. We help assemble, dissemble and transporting the model.
We also introduce the Spartan Superway project to the publics on the event.

This is the week before the PaseoPublic
Prototyping Challenge. The team was informed that the track was
completed. The team started to attach the corrugated metal strip on the tack.
The adhesive we use to attach corrugated strip on the track is super glue. The
team had tried hot glue, Epoxy and High-Strength spray adhesive. None of these
adhesives work with our design. Thus, the team decided to use super glue
instead. The corrugated metal strips were attached on the track. There was
another new problem found. The corrugated metal strips have to leave space for
the screws for assemble and dissemble the track, there no quick solution for
the problem right now.

The mobile application team informed
us that the communication system between the podcars was not ready yet, thus,
the position sensing system will not be ready for the Paseo event.